Hall marks on gold & silver plate

PrefoyCe to the Fii^st Edition.
nPHE Tables of Assay Office Letters here given will be found
more complete than any hitherto published. Of those which
have already appeared, the first printed about thirty years since by a
printer in St. Anne's Lane was a short list of alphabetical letters
from the year 1 697 ;
but they were badly formed, and printed with-
out being- compared with the actual <strong>marks</strong> on the plate itself.
Mr. Octavius Morgan, in 1853, produced an improved Table
of the Annual Assay Office Letters of the Goldsmiths' <strong>Hall</strong> of
London, tracing them back to the fifteenth century, and carefully
comparing his lists with the <strong>marks</strong> on the plate, consulting also
the Records and Minutes of the Goldsmiths' Company
for confirma-
tion. He tells us that from the year 1558 regularly formed
escutcheons were used to enclose the letters, but unfortunately did
not show us what their forms were, only giving
the letters.
I have endeavoured to supply this defect by placing each letter
in its proper shield a most important aid in determining the date
of a piece of plate, where several alphabets of different dates are
similar.
Some years since I also printed a small sheet of Assay Office
Letters. All these are now out of print, and, at the request of
numerous friends, I have been induced to publish
one on a more
extended scale, embracing the Marks used at the principal Assay
Offices of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Although a great proportion of the plate made in England was
stamped in London, yet other towns, from an early period, had the
like privilege. Scotland also had its Assay Office at Edinburgh,
and I am enabled, through the perseverance and untiring zeal of Mr.